If you’ve ever wanted to be in a fighting game, now’s your chance! Photo Dojo for DSi lets you take pictures of yourself and friends in various fighting poses for use in a simplistic beat-em-up. Best of all, if you have a DSi and can connect wirelessly to the Internet, you can download Photo Dojo for free up until the beginning of June! After that it’ll go up to 200 points, but that’s still not a bad price to pay for one of the best uses of the DSi camera.

First you’ll have to create a fighter. Take pictures by yourself or have a friend help you shoot photos. I recommend getting a friend to help if you can. Snap photos of you in fighting, crouching, and kicking stances that will be used as animations in the game.

You can even take a picture to be used as a background (I chose the marquee from my Pac-Man arcade machine). And you can take a snapshot of whatever you want to use as a fireball attack. I snapped a pic of Pac-Man for my fireball move. Brother Jeff took a picture of a grenade for his, and Jeff’s friend had a can of Dr. Pepper as his projectile.

After that, you get to record voices to go along with your moves and taunts. My favorite was the sound that Jeff’s friend used for his Dr. Pepper fireball move. He yelled out in a bad Japanese accent “DR. PEPPERU!” like a voice from a bad Street Fighter game!

Then you’re ready to play! In single player mode, you walk from left to right and must try and defeat 100 other fighters, like a simplistic side-scrolling brawler. Although I don’t know how you’re supposed to defeat 100 characters, it’s darn near impossible! At least the play control is responsive and moves are easy to learn.

There’s also a two player one-on-one mode, but both people have to share the same DS. Each uses the buttons on either side. It’s a bit cumbersome to play this way instead of wirelessly with separate DS systems. Plus, it would’ve been nice to be able to import characters to other Photo Dojo users. But I bet Nintendo opted to leave that out for good reason, as people could abuse that feature as you can imagine. At any rate, Photo Dojo is a free game (for now), so it’s hard to complain about anything, really.

Kid Factor:

Photo Dojo is rated E-10 for Everyone 10 and up with an ESRB descriptor of Violence. Even though you’re punching and kicking, defeated enemies only fly off the screen so the violence seems more fakey and cartoony than anything. Some parents may not like that you’re taking pictures of people so they can fight each other in a game, but once you see it in action, you’ll realize it’s so silly that it’s hard to take it too seriously. I can imagine a kid having hours of fun taking pictures and making silly characters, voices, and moves for their very own fighters. So if you want a free way to keep your kids occupied for a while, hurry up and download Photo Dojo on DSi before June!

Tags: Game Reviews